It is a very dull mind, whether belonging to man or woman, that does
not feel stirred by recent movements--not here alone but all over the
world--into some quickening sense of the deeper life, the broader
human claims, the unifying and uniting influences which have sprung
into activity, and which address, not the visionary, but the
thoughtful and far-seeing, with prophetic gleams of a new heaven and a
new earth.
[Footnote 1: _The Cycle_.]
It is also a very narrow and self-absorbed mind which, only sees in
these openings opportunities for its own pleasure, or chances for its
own advancement on its own narrow and exclusive lines. The lesson of
the hour is help for those that need it, in the shape in which they
need it, and kinship with all and everything that exists on the face
of God's green earth. If we miss this, we miss the spirit, the
illuminating light of the whole movement, and lose it in the mire of
our own selfishness. To women this uplifting, these open doors, mean
more than to men. They have been hedged about with so many
restrictions, forced and held in such blind and narrow ways, that it
is little wonder if sight and steps are feeble, and that they find it
impossible to take it all in, or to recognize at once the full meaning
of the day that is dawning for them.
For we are only at the threshold of a future that thrills us with its
wonderful possibilities;--possibilities of friendship where separation
was; of love where hatred was; of unity where division was; of peace
where war was; of light--physical, mental and spiritual--where
darkness was; of agreement and equality where differences and
traditions had built up walls of distinction and lines of caste. This
beautiful thing needs only to be realized in thought to become an
actual fact in life, and those who do realize it are enriched by it
beyond the power of words to express. "I should like to wake up rich
one morning just to see how it would feel," said one woman to another
not long since. "I do wake up rich every morning now," said the other,
"though I have still my living to earn, because my life is full of
prized opportunities, of cherished friendships, of chances for
acquiring knowledge that I had not in youth, and keeping myself in
touch with broad human facts and forces. Everything is interesting to
me, more interesting the closer my acquaintance with it, so that I am
fast getting rid of those ugly things we call prejudices, and laying
in a stock of appreciation instead, which is in itself enriching."
The old feeling of patron and dependant--so irksome, so humiliating,
so feudal, yet containing for many the whole moral law--is done away
with, and in its place appears a spirit of true fellowship, a growing
sense of mutual respect and helpfulness. Club life teaches us that
there are many kinds of wealth in the world--the wealth of ideas, of
knowledge, of sympathy, of readiness to be put in any place and used
in any way for the general good. These are given, and no price is or
can be put upon them; yet they ennoble and enrich whatever comes
within their influence.
Money is the only kind of wealth that is not common, that is not given
freely; and for that reason it has a deadening and demoralizing effect
upon the minds of those who cultivate and increase it for its own
sake, or fail to put it to its larger and more human uses. Wise
distribution is the only way in which money can be made valuable in
the world: it is only as a developing power, as an aid to the worker,
and a creator of instrumentalities by which good objects can be
accomplished, that it is desirable. In the light of this view, what
place do those men and women occupy who shut themselves up with their
money, and shut out the wide human interests which educate the mind
and heart to noble issues? Going to church does not help them, for it
must be an exclusive church and an exclusive pew, under an exclusive
pastor who patronizes Jesus Christ but does not sympathize with Him,
and who talks about the "dregs of society" as if it were something
far removed from the knowledge and consciousness of his hearers.
The woman of the past has especially been cramped up, bound around,
and blindfolded by her special form of belief, by her tradition, by
her social customs, by her education, by her whole environment; and
the effect will remain stamped more or less upon her individuality
long after the predisposing causes have passed away and better
influences and circumstances have taken their place.
But the present is full of encouragement. The new life has begun: the
woman is here;--not the martyred woman of the past; not the
self-absorbed woman of the present, but the awakened woman of the
future. That woman whose faculties have been cultivated, whose gifts
have been trained, whose mind has been enlarged, whose heartbeats
respond to the touch of the unseen human, and whose quickened insight
recognizes father, brother, sister, and friend beneath the strange as
well as the dilapidated robe.
This woman whose face no artist has painted, who is not yet familiar,
is among us, and will remain. Her work humanizes and reconciles, and
the changes it will effect will come so noiselessly that the majority
will not be aware of them till they are accomplished, and then each
one will announce, and perhaps believe, that they themselves have
brought these things about. But this will not matter, for when the
work is done it is really of little consequence who did it, since all
who do any good work at all are simply agents and ministers, charged
with a task it is their business to perform, and happy only as they
are able to execute it. It is those who are "let alone," who live for
and in themselves, who are the unhappy ones; and for these, though
they possess fine houses, much gold, stocks and bonds, the poorest
worker may well fervently pray that the new life may come to these
also.